I almost feel as though two reviews are needed for The Boy; one for the final climactic sequence and another for the remainder of the narrative building up to that point. They simply feel so disjointed from each other that it is almost unfair to compare them together. Far too much of the screenplay relies upon a final twist of sorts, but it mostly just made me feel as though I had been cheated. Had this been a short film, I would not have minded, but the feature length narrative forces the audience to invest in far too much of the slow-burn mystery for the end revelation to be such a cheap cop-out.

There needs to be some reason for a film to keep my attention, and hating the main character does not suffice. For this reason, I often found Hostile Borders nearly unbearable. Despite ample opportunity within the unique set-up to discuss politics, this inexplicable drama instead forces melodrama and cheap thrills. We spend the entire film with a character that has no apparent opinions beyond her own selfish desires, and even these are often difficult to discern amidst the sparse dialogue given to her and the one-note performance from the lead. Even the most obvious character development you might expect to see is thrown away for mindless action sequences, which are poorly shot and have no gravity since I had no compassion for anyone involved.